Abstract:

The bacterial genome is well understood by biologists. Although its
efficiency and adaptability should make it a good model for evolutionary
algorithms, the bacterial genome is tightly coupled with the components
of the bacterial metabolism, referred to here as the
metabolome
.
This paper explores an approach to modelling an artificial bacterial
metabolome in an efficient and modular manner, so that analogues of
bacterial genome organisation and gene regulation can be implemented in
evolutionary algorithms. We propose a particulate model of bacterial
metabolic pathways in which the constituents drift in a fixed, limited
space and obey a limited set of biologically plausible reaction rules.
The potential of this model is demonstrated by creating a network that
is capable of appropriate behavioural switching that can be observed in
bacteria.